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dia. . . . Students were too dependent on their instructors they were unable to think for themselves as well as unwilling.
(Sympathy for the deaf child may make the child more and more dependent) Many students who came to Gallaudet seemed unwilling or unable to make a sustained mental effort the students lacked self-reliance; some students couldn't use the index of a textbook. President Hall did find comfort in an article written by a Gallaudet professor that appeared in American Annals of the Deaf in
May of 192 2. The subject was a printing course at Gallaudet: "Many students pickup a good education this way. Many of our young men who are good writers began in the print shop. It is especially good for the deaf boy, handicapped in language;
constant spelling and the setting up of line after line of type have the tendency to fix in the mind correct sentence construction;
the printer has a good chance of improving his English."6
Despite students' difficulties, surveys conducted by the college showed that Gallaudet graduates were leading productive and fulfilling lives. They owned their own homes and cars in equal proportion to hearing college graduates, and in 1931 Gallaudet graduates contributed $50,000 to honor the anniversary of the birth of Edward Miner Gallaudet. Typical hearing attitudes prevailed, however, at the presentation of the check by the alumni to the college. Secretary of the Interior Ray Wilbur noted that "it was an unusual circumstance for handicapped persons to be presenting their alma mater with a large sum of money from the earnings of their successful careers."7
Conditions and attitudes improved very little over the next forty years. In 1963 Irving S. Fusfeld, one of the former deans of the college, offered this assessment of the academic potential of deaf students "Continued interest in academic study has little lure for deaf youth, who, even if they remain in school for the usual 12 or 13 years have a trade in hand with which to start their livelihood and perhaps a home of their own, and at an age when these are natural urges."8
Of course, oralism contributed to the belief that deaf people were deficientless capable than hearing people. In 1958 the administrators and board members of Gallaudet saw fit to grant

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